Currently the Raiders are looking for a temporary home while they wait for their new stadium to be ready in Las Vegas for the start of the 2020 NFL season. Oakland does not want them back and is suing both the team and the entire NFL, currently leaving the team without a place to play in 2019.
Recent reports have surfaced with potential temporary landing spots in San Diego or Tucson for the Raiders. Other options include the Raiders sharing a Premier League soccer stadium in London or sharing Levi Stadium with the 49ers or the San Francisco Giants Baseball stadium in 2019. While staying in the Bay area makes the most sense, I wouldn’t put anything past the Raiders or the NFL with this decision.
In addition to the Raiders needing temporary housing, the LA Chargers have been a disaster since moving from San Diego to Los Angeles. Their “home” games are filled with visiting teams fans. They can’t sell out a 27,000 seat stadium. The city of San Diego is not going to pay for a stadium to be built, which is why they left in the first place. Their owner is not going to pay for a new stadium anywhere, which is how the team ended up moving to LA.
Why Utah?
The state of Utah has a lot more football fans than most people realize. On a Saturday during the fall, more than 150,000 fans can be seen filling FBS stadiums when Utah State University (Logan), the University of Utah (Salt Lake City) and BYU (Provo) all play home games. The University of Utah has sold out their stadium every game since moving to the PAC 12 conference. On a really bad day, BYU gets 50,000 fans to their home games (65,000+ capacity stadium). To add to it, Weber State University, an FCS school located in Ogden, often draws 10,000 fans. I know that college football is different than the NFL. My point is, people in Utah are really into football.
Utah has one of the fastest growing populations in the country. It’s not the same place as it was twenty years ago. Ever since the Olympics were held here in 2002, the population growth along the Wasatch Front has been explosive. It’s not slowing down. The job market is also one of the best in the country, and there is a booming tech community here. People are coming from all over for jobs and the outdoors, and they are staying.
Add all this up and Utah is a place that should be on the NFL’s radar. Should being the key here. The top arguments are that it’s not a big enough market, and that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) won’t go to games on Sundays. In the past, I would agree. Now, not so much. Again, I reference back to the population growth that the Salt Lake City area and state has seen. The vast majority of the growth has been from people who are not from the predominant religion in Utah. Aslo, we are talking about 8 regular season home games a year. With games being played on Thursday nights, Monday nights, and some teams having a Saturday game in December, many teams will have at least one regular season home game that is not on a Sunday, leaving just 7 Sunday home games. In my opinion, there are enough rabid football fans in Utah to get 65,000 – 80,000 fans to an NFL home game 8 times a year.
The other factor is corporate money. Does Utah have the business community to buy up the premium tickets that would help sustain an NFL team. Again, in the past the answer was no. With the explosive growth the state has seen, the answer now is yes.
Finally, can a stadium get built. Again, my answer is yes. I personally think that owners of professional sports teams should pay for stadiums and arenas that their teams play in. That said, I can think of a handful of communities in the greater Salt Lake metro area that would line up to bid for an NFL stadium. It would get done, unlike in other places. Taxpayers payed for an MLS stadium in Utah, and the popularity of the MLS pales in comparison to the NFL.
Throughout my life, I’ve been to my fair share of NFL games. As I’ve traveled to games in the west, I’ve met fans from Utah in every stadium I’ve been to. I’ll never forget the first regular season NFL game that I attended. It was in 1994 at the LA Coliseum, and the Raiders were playing host to the Seahawks . My brother and I had taken a weekend trip to LA, as I had just graduated high school. There are many things that I remember about the game itself, but there is one thing that still sticks out. In a stadium full of people that was nearly 1000 miles from home, the couple that just happened to be sitting next to us were from our hometown in Utah.
The NFL is now scheduling more and more regular season games every year in London and Mexico City in an effort to grow their brand. At the same time, there are markets in the US like Utah that are clamoring for the NFL to come to town.
When I was a kid, my dad took my brothers and I to Utah Jazz basketball games every year. We traveled from North Ogden to Salt Lake City for the games, often on school nights. Jazz fans come from not only all over the state of Utah, but from the surrounding states. Although a teams fan base may consist mostly of fans in their home city/state, often times they draw from the surrounding region and nationally. Find me a bigger city in the US that the population has a longer drive to a city with an NFL team than Salt Lake City. You can’t.
In the preseason, the NBA would often schedule games in cities that did not have a team. On a few occasions, my dad took us to preseason games in our hometown. I also know that the team played games in other cities, like Boise, Idaho, Provo, Utah and St. George, Utah. The NBA still does things like this. The Lakers regularly play games in Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Anaheim. It grows their brand. Fans become attached.
The NHL recently brought one of their preseason games to Salt Lake City as the LA Kings played the Vancouver Canucks this last September. The preseason game was sold out the day tickets went on sale. MLB has done the same in the past few years, with a similar response in ticket sales. So why not the NFL?
So often we hear about the problems that NFL teams have in getting fans to go to preseason games. In my opinion, they should take their preseason games on the road to cities in the US that don’t have NFL teams. Play a preseason game in Salt Lake City, or even Provo. Test out a new market, and see what the response is like. I know what I think it would be like. Instead of an empty stadium, it would be packed. Instead of another game in London or Mexico City, the Chargers should strongly consider playing a regular season game in Utah (or better yet, moving here). Geographically it makes sense, and they would fill a stadium in Utah.
Call me crazy, or whatever you want. I think the NFL can work in Utah. I don’t expect it to happen, but I do believe it can. What do you think?
